DisOrdinary Architecture Advisory Board
-
Liz Crow
Liz is an artist-activist based in Bristol. She is creative director of Roaring Girl Productions (RGP) which bring to light marginalised and misrepresented stories, both contemporary and historical, via a range of media. Liz has been part of disability activism and scholarship since the 1980s, writing many key texts that engage with disability and feminism.
-
Manijeh Verghese (She/Her)
Manijeh is a designer and curator who works on independent curatorial projects. She was co-curator of The Garden of Privatised Delights – the British Pavilion at the 17th International Venice Architecture Biennale and was the interpretation specialist for the new South Asia Gallery for the Manchester Museum in partnership with the British Museum that was co-curated by a collective of over 30 local experts. She is the Head of Public Engagement at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture, where she organises lectures, exhibitions and other special projects for a range of audiences. She also co-leads the design studio Diploma Unit 12 and is a member of the Senior Management Team at the AA. She is currently one of the Mayor of London’s Design Advocates, an External Examiner at Cambridge University and a member of the Festival Committee steering group for London Festival of Architecture.
-
Poppy Levison (She/Her)
Poppy is a designer, researcher and disability activist working across the creative industries, including as an Architectural Assistant at DSDHA. As a blind woman, Poppy has a particular interesting expertise in the politics of inclusive design and accessibility, a concern with architecture’s tendency to fixate on the visual rather than the experiential and the accessibility of architecture education. She is coordinator for DisOrdinary Architecture’s Architecture Beyond Sight foundation programme, in collaboration with the Bartlett School of Architecture UCL.
-
Yates Norton (He/Him)
Yates is a curator at the Roberts Institute of Art, a non-profit contemporary arts organisation. Previously a curator at Rupert, Vilnius, Yates has a commitment to disability justice work and has explored the meanings of interdependence, commitment and allyship across different identities. This has included public talks with collaborator and friend David Ruebain in arts spaces (Serpentine Galleries, London; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London), at universities (Boston, Cambridge, Greenwich), on artists (Stephen Dwoskin) and in journals (Tohu) as well as other exhibitions, including an online show for Unit London.
-
Helen Stratford (She/Her)
Helen is a socially engaged artist and architect, writer, educator & researcher with a PhD in Performative Architectures from the University of Sheffield, UK (2021). Her inter-disciplinary practice, embraces performance, art, architecture, ethnography & civic action. . Working with performative workshops, site-specific interventions, video, speculative writing, and discursive platforms, which often deploy humour and parody, her practice searches for modalities that expand architectural conventions to challenge spatial prejudices produced at the intersections of social, cultural, economic and political relations. Informed by her lived experience of chronic pain, she is currently exploring crip time (en)counters with public space.
-
Natasha Trotman
Natasha is an Equalities Designer whose practice explores extending the frontiers of knowledge around mental difference, which includes non-typical ways of being, bodyminds and marginalised experiences, in addition to also reframing mainstream notions of equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion towards post-normative equity. This is done via an intersectional design lens; involving the forming of physical interactions through investigative play and policy design. It includes working with neurodiverse communities and people with varied abilities, including dyspraxic and autistic persons, as well as those living with a dementia. She has also worked with their carers and supporters. Natasha has a Masters degree in Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art. Previously working as a Research Associate at The Royal College of Art's Helen Hamlyn Centre for Inclusive Design (HHCD) as well as at The Wellcome Collection Hub on the Wellcome Trust and HHCD Design and The Mind Research 2 year project focused on engagement and co-creation with neurodiverse groups and neurodivergent individuals. Natasha has exhibited widely, creating multi-modal offerings, interactions and workshops, including a residency at Somerset House, and working with Wellcome, The British Council, The London Design Biennale, The V&A, The National Gallery and Tate Britain.Description goes here
-
Jordan Whitewood-Neal (He/Him)
Jordan is an architectural researcher and designer interested in the relationship between architecture and disability, as well as its history in architectural education. He has a Master’s degree in Architecture and Masters in Architectural Research from the University of Brighton and has taught and lectured at multiple schools across the UK including the London School of Architecture, Central Saint Martins and Nottingham Trent University. Jordan has worked for and collaborated with New Architecture Writers, We Made That, Royal College of Arts and the Bartlett School of Architecture on various themes around disability, access to education, and cultural infrastructure. He is also a Young Trustee for the Architecture Foundation and co-founder of disability centred research collective Dis.
-
James Zakha-Haas
James is a writer, artist and co-founder of Dis, an art and architecture research practice focused on the value of the disabled experience. He studied Culture, Curation and Criticism at Central Saint Martins, UAL, and has written extensively for Disability Arts Online (DAO). He is interested in the ways meaning is expressed through art and writing and blends different disciplines together to create an integrated body of thought. His work probes what it is to experience the world from an altered perspective, understanding how that perspective shapes the way we see, feel and love.